She used post-dated checks… Yeah. Post-dated checks. There were two deliveries on Friday. The checks were dated April first. April Fool. April Fool.
Then another revelation:
He’d just bummed a smoke off me: His first of the evening. I was halfway through my second pack. I said,
“This might surprise you, but I don’t think so. From the autopsy. Toxicology? I get the feeling Tom’s told you about it.”
“Miriam told me about it. She tells me everything in the end. The lithium? I played dumb. But I already knew.”
“You knew Jennifer was on lithium?”
“Not while she was alive I didn’t.” He sighed and said, “Mike, tell me something. That book… Making Sense of Suicide doesn’t make sense of suicide, or anything else. But it’s extra vague on suicide notes. How many suicides leave suicide notes?”
That’s a very slippery stat, and I told him so.
“And what’s the difference? What does it mean?”
Nothing in itself, I said. Depends on the person, depends on the note. Some offer comfort. Others, blame.
“She left a note. She left a note. She sent me a note by U.S. Mail. I went back to the office a week later and it was there in my tray. Here, help yourself. Now
I’m going to do what she did on Saturday morning, when she posted it. I’m going to take a walk around the block.”
I waited till I heard the door. I huddled down over the tape recorder. I tried to raise my voice above a whisper—and I couldn’t. I had to use the volume control on the machine, because mine just wasn’t working.
“My darling,” I whispered. “You’re back at work now and that consoles me. That, and the fact that you’re the kindest lover on the planet and will eventually have to forgive me for what I’ve done.
“You knew me ten times better than anyone, but I wasn’t quite what you thought I was. Almost exactly a year ago I started getting the sense that I was losing control of my thoughts. That’s the only way I can put it. My thoughts went about their thought thing, doing what they had to do, while I was just an innocent bystander. I didn’t dare go through Tulkinghorn, because I couldn’t trust him not to run to Dad. I thought I could fix it myself—which might have been part of the internal liar dice. I read up on it. And when you thought I was at the Brogan on Mondays I was at Rainbow Plaza where all the GCG people take their lunchbreaks on the lawn. You never scored a dime-bag so easy. Since last May I’ve been on varying doses of a stabilizer. Serzone, depecote, tegretol—they sound like moral stances. They dry your head out. But they stopped helping.
“I’m frightened. I keep thinking I’m going to do something that nobody’s ever done before—something altogether inhuman. Is that what I’m doing now? Baby, I’m staying with you until tomorrow night. You were perfect for me. And remember that you couldn’t have done anything any different.
“Help Ma. Help Dad. Help Dad. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…”
And so it went on, over the page to the end of the sheet: I’m sorry.
Some time later I was in the kitchen again, drinking soda again. Watching the man move around again. Not just the cold air had pushed the blood into his cheeks. His movements, now, were sharper and noisier, tinnier. And his breath sounded raw. I changed the tape. I smoked. Feeding the thing inside of me. The thing inside of me—it wasn’t any calmer. It too was sharper, noisier—colder, angrier.
He said over his shoulder: “Mike, don’t you have symptoms when you’re on that shit? Physical symptoms?”
“Yeah, you can do,” I said.
“Doesn’t your face swell up and your hair fall out?” “It can do, yeah. Suddenly you’re Kojak.” “Mike, you’ll believe me when I say…My faith in my powers of observation have—has seen better days. I lived with a mood-drugged suicide for a year without noticing. Maybe I wouldn’t even have noticed that I was living with Kojak. But I’d have noticed that I was fucking him, wouldn’t I? Reassure me.”